Piano Study, Piano Instruction

Discovery of a book, Piano and Song

In 2007, I accidentally found a book called Piano and Song by Friedrch Wieck in the college library. I was a graduate student at that time and supported my tuition through piano teaching and accompanying. I was browsing through the shelf on the subject of piano, hoping to find some good books on piano teaching.The title was a kind of odd, almost lame to me. But the name of author itself got me alerted, Friedrich Wieck, the father of Clara Schumann! See his portrait in this post. He doesn’t seem to be nice person is it? I had a bad impression about him since he has been described as greed, vain impresario than piano teacher. He was infamous for exploiting his own family members to thrive his own business as the piano dealer and gaining his reputation as a master teacher. Clara Schumann was a prime victim of his grand plan. Poor Clara, she had to give up normal childhood for concertizing throughout Europe. Moreover, she ended up going through the legal battle with her own father for marrying Robert Schumann. However, after I read the entire book, I completely changed my perspective about him, except vain part. The book was very easy to read and not that long. I was actually rejoiced the content. I felt like I found a gem! The advice for how to conduct initial piano lessons for young children is my favorite chapter. There, you will discover he was indeed a great teacher. It has been 8 years passed from discovering this book. I have worked many different types of piano accompanying jobs. Each accompanying job required particular piano skills that need to be cultivated from the early stage of learning piano such as transposing on the spot. Surprisingly Herr Wieck initiated those skills to his students from the start. I strongly believe this book and his instruction is the ultimate way to study piano. I am wishing that I can share my reverence to his teaching method to the reader. My desire and passion for sharing his teaching method seems to be increasing day by day. His book can download from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16658/16658-h/16658-h.htm